Posted 22 Apr 2020 Good morning everyone, i'm new to the forum but had a question regarding RS Logix 5000. At my full time job we have a lot of different brand PLC's. Also, a lot of different models of those brands. I've used RSlogix 5, 500 and 5000 before. Mostly just for trouble shooting why I'm not getting an output. We only have one 5000 PLC at my full time job and I knew the IP address of that plc. So, to get online I was able to set up my ethernet driver and I get online through wireless. Because of the covid 19 my full time job has cut hours so I've been helping a friend at another plant to make ends meet. They have a main PLC (Logix5575) and then there are remote racks all over the plant. Everything is on the net work. This is a lot different than what I've learned on so I had a few questions. They don't have a copy of the program saved anywhere so I'm not sure of the IP address of the 5575. I've included two pictures. To the right of the rack there is a ethernet switch I can plug into but I don't know how to set up the driver without knowing the correct IP address of the PLC. Is there a way to get online with the PLC through the switch without knowing the IP address? Also, how do I know which series of RSlogix 5000 to use? All I currently have is enterprise series but the company that I'm working on the side for is willing to buy what every is needed so we trouble shoot some of the issues they have. Thanks for any help that is offered. jeremy Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 22 Apr 2020 Your Ethernet module should be scrolling the IP address (either the second from the right or third from the right module). 1 person likes this Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 22 Apr 2020 Tim, thanks for the info. if i remember correctly one of those boards had one ip address and the other one had a different ipaddress. How can i tell which one would be for the CPU? By setting up the driver in rslinx and once it finds it i'll know if its the CPU by the description?? Thanks for the quick response and the info! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 22 Apr 2020 (edited) Either will allow you to connect to the PLC. Just make sure your PC's ethernet card is in the same subnet. One is probably for talking to remote racks and the other is for local devices. Once you see the PLC in RSLinx, you should be able to view the properties of the controller and it will tell you the firmware and therefore the RSLogix 5000 version required. Edited 22 Apr 2020 by pcmccartney1 1 person likes this Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 22 Apr 2020 Also you'll likely need to use Ethernet Devices driver if you're coming in remotely since most feed VPNs block the broadcast packets of Ethernet IP driver. You can learn more about these two drivers at the following link. https://www.theautomationstore.com/how-to-connect-to-an-allen-bradley-controllogix-or-compactlogix-plc-over-ethernet-using-studio-5000/ 1 person likes this Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 22 Apr 2020 Thank you both for the help. I'm going to be onsite there on Friday afternoon and plan on trying to get online then. I wont' have any of the tags or comments since I don't have the original program, correct? This is a first for me since where I've worked here the last 14 years I've always had the source code for the plc and haven't had to worry about this. Tim, I went through the link you sent me above and also found some of the lessons you have posted there. I plan on going through a lot of those also for training purposes. I want to try and get my skill set higher on the PLC/HMI/Scada side of things. I do some of that now but mostly troubleshooting more circuits and upgrading VFD's. Thanks everyone for the help. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 23 Apr 2020 As pcmccartney1 said, once you've set your laptop to the same subnet as the Ethernet card in the chassis and have established a good, working RSLinx driver, you should be able to use RSLinx to look at the controller's properties and see what version of Studio 5000 that controller has. All of the L7 controllers (that one is an L75) can only go down to V19. In V21 and above, tag descriptions and internal documentation can be downloaded with the project. So if your controller is using V21 or above, the tag descriptions and other internal documentation should be readily available, so long as the original programmer allowed them to be downloaded. It's also important to note that in ControlLogix you will still need a matching copy of the project on your laptop to be able to see and interact with the project in the controller. When you attempt to go online with the controller, Studio will pop up a dialogue box asking you which .acd you want to use as the matching file. I usually create a dummy folder on my desktop, point Studio to that folder, and click OK. Studio takes about 20 or 30 seconds to decide that there is no matching file in that folder, informs you of this, and politely asks if you would like it to create one for you. Click yes, and within a few minutes you will not only be online with the controller, you'll now have your offline copy saved. Incidentally, if you're company is willing to spend a few thousand dollars to get a copy of Studio, ask your Rockwell distributor to give you a couple of quotes on different bundles. For a few bucks more you could get several versions, as well as other essential tools, like FactoryTalk. Use RSLinx as described above to take an inventory of what the different controllers in that plant are using. Good luck and let us know how it goes! 1 person likes this Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 24 Apr 2020 Thank you all so much for the help. I'm going to head up to that other job this afternoon and fix a few things with some VFD's that they have problems with. While I'm there I'll just use RSLINX to see if I can at least see the CPU and then and then I"ll go into properties and see what I can find there. My friend is the maintenance manager at this other plant but he doesn't really have an electrician (he's a mechanic) so I'm helping him out fixing some things and going to help train the JR electrician once he starts. They are willing to spend some money ( I already told him he was looking at I just checked the copy of RSLogix 5000 I have on my work computer from my main job and when it boots up it says ver. 10, 11, 12 and 13 so I will definitely not be able to use the laptop from my main job since this PLC seems to be a lot newer. I'll look at the properties tonight and then post what I find when I get home. I'm sure this is obvious but I had a question about studio 5000 also. I've never used that before. I looked it up online and it appears like it's like RSLogix 5000 but it encompasses the plc, hmi's and the drives that are on the network, correct? Sorry for all the questions guys just trying to learn as much as I can. I'll update with what I find tonight. Once again, thanks for all of the help! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 24 Apr 2020 Sorry for the stupid question guys. Did another 5 min of research and found the answer. Looks like around V20 it switches from RSLogix 5000 to studio 5000. I'll update what I find on the plc tonight. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 26 Apr 2020 This is a quick and dirty rundown on the family of Allen Bradley PLCs and associated software. There are a lot of variations on the theme, but this is the overall gist of it. Controllers Software PLC5 RS5 SLC 8-bit processors & obsolete RS500 SLC-5/01 SLC-5/02 SLC-5/03 SLC-5/03 16 bit processors SLC-5/04 SLC-5/05 MicroLogix ControlLogix processors are 32 bit up to the L7. The L8 is 64 bit. ControlLogix At or below V19 use RS5000 At or above V20 use Studio5000 CompactLogix GuardLogix SoftLogix 1 person likes this Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 28 Apr 2020 thanks for the information everyone. On Saturday I started to go through some of the old offices and I found the old laptop that was originally used for the plant. Fired it up and it had an old copy of the program. It's using studio 5000 version 30. Hooked up and was able to upload from the processor so now i have a good copy of the current program. I also found on that old laptop the programmer had a word document that listed all the per-missives for each conveyor/motor/pump to be ran in auto. There has since been some things added so I'm going through the program now to update the word document so the operators will have that to work off of. I'm trying to install the studio 5000 version 30 on my laptop from my other work because we ended up having that software already but having a few issues. Going to work on that today. Thanks again for the help that everyone offered! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
